FRANKthoughts

During the last six months we had the pleasure of having around 300 people join us for a two hour social strategy session followed by drinks at FOG. As the year comes to a close we would love all the people who attended to have the presentation handy and the people who missed out to have a taste of the action.

FRANkademy has three parts:
1. twitter for brands.
2. Blog networks eg. Nuffnang.
3. Social business strategy case study – Melbourne’s GPO.

So here it is. Please feel free to comment, suggest improvements, share and tweet if you find it useful.

The improved FRANkademy will be back next year. If you’d like to be notified please put your name + email here.

Thank you everyone. We had a blast.

After experimenting with brochure blog: “Now we are talking” Telstra is finally taking the time to do something they rarely do well: Listen. After following their tweet above, I’ve reached a social survey page and was asked to answer these questions:

1. Which of the following best describes your relationship to Telstra?
2. How did you find out about this survey?
3. Have you ever interacted with Telstra through the following social media sites?
4. How likely are you to prefer the Telstra brand as a result of interacting with Telstra through the above mentioned social media sites?
5. On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend Telstra services to a friend or colleague?
6. How often do you engage in social media?
7. What are your favorite websites, blogs or community forums for reading or commenting on the following topics?
8. Please rate your level of interest on the following topics (1= very interested, 5= not interested at all)
9. If you could ask any one question to Telstra’s senior leadership team, what would it be?
10. Thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey. We greatly appreciate it!
If you would like to receive a small token of our appreciation for completing the survey, please provide your email below. ( I will let you know about this mystery small token when I’ll get it)

This is the first thing I like from Telstra in a long time. I like the survey, the questions, the tone of Scott on twitter. Lets hope they get it right this time.

I was blogging about taking this kind of approach to social media, treating it as a business strategy not a marketing add-on. This is the process we take with our clients who are interested in a social media solution.

To find out more about social media you’re invited to RSVP to our final free social media session + drinks FRANkademy on the 30th October.

1234 Telstra assist ridiculous ad is made even more ridiculous after you try the service. This Saturday I called the 1234 number in distress. I wanted to get phone numbers of clinics near my area as I was searching for a doctor (I was offline for a few hours so couldn’t do this properly). The pleasant operator told me of several clinics in my area. When I asked for the numbers she said she could only give me one number per call. One number out of 5-6 options. I felt like I was just put in prison with one phone call to make. After picking one clinic randomly and calling the number I realised I got to the Massage clinic. A Massage clinic when I was looking for a doctor. 1234 couldn’t even tell me this number wasn’t what I was looking for. It’s such a shame this important service makes you feel you’re talking to a sock and I wish Telstra will learn from some smart people at the end of this post and a bit from Zappos.

Zappos was sold to amazon a few weeks ago for around $900 million. Why did Amazon paid so much for it? it wasn’t for the distribution channels, for the stock or for the technology. It was for a secret sauce – their culture. Zappos has an amazing customer service department which provides word of mouth in abundance. People hear about Zappos from other people. People also hear and talk to Zappos on their Twitter account – this is a feed from all their employees who tweet (more than 400). Oh and Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO has more than one million followers on twitter – Maybe there is a relation between number of followers on twitter/employees twittering and business worth?

Who do you think is the most advanced and friendliest customer service company/brand in Australia? Who do you think deserve an “Australian customer service” award?

A big shout out to everyone who attended our fourth FRANkademy on Friday, for what was another very successful social media session.  Thanks to MCN, Hardie Grant Publishing, Yaffa Publishing (AdNews), Carat, iProspect, Keep Left PR, Propeller PR and Austereo for their input and participation.

A special thankyou also goes out to our friends at Nuffnang, for making the big trip from overseas!

The session covered off a broad range of topics, including:

An introduction to the size of the opportunity social media presents
The importance of having an integrated social media strategy and not ‘grabbing at the tools’
What is Twitter?  Who is using it well?
Blogging, Blog Networks and Nuffnang Australia case studies
FRANkVizeum’s approach to bought/owned/earned media – a working case study

For anyone who missed Friday’s session and would like to attend our September event, please RSVP here and we’ll look forward to seeing you!

“Social media” is all the buzz now and clients want to “get on it”, “use it” or “leverage it”. Many people think social media is just another media. It’s not. (Tip: if it’s not a dialogue between your company and users it’s not social media). Many people also believe that social media is just another part of their “Marketing”. It’s not. Being social starts from the inside. From your organisation. You cant start a conversation only to leave the room a month later. To fully understand what needs to be done to GET IT RIGHT lets take a step back.

David Armano’s latest presentation (from the SXSW2010 panel picker) about “social business strategy” (what we call immersion).
I like the term “social business strategy” – probably the biggest and toughest part of social media because it’s not about paid for/set and forget marketing solution. It’s about asking questions first, research and probing. It’s not about “Lets do it” it’s about “Lets think about it”. It’s about your organisation being ready for it. So, bringing this down to the essential ingredients, it is about 1. strategy 2. tactics 3. measure. I also love Armano mentioning the scale element of this approach.

Seth Godin’s post “when tactics drown out strategy” is highlighting the difference between strategy and tactics. “Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best customers over time” is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience, people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy… and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that they never really embraced in the first place. Seth is right. Most brands want to go viral/facebook/youtube before they have a clear strategy. It’s like attempting to drive a truck before taking any driving lessons.

Matt Dickman summarize this nicely in his post: Want better digital strategy, ban seven dirty words. If you don’t have a strategy you shouldn’t talk about “what we’ll do with xyz tool”.

To end this up here’s Paul Isakson’s post that started my search (Thanks Paul).
If you don’t want to fail in “social media” don’t treat it as an add-on. Have someone in charge of it, have a plan and create a budget. But first, start with a strategy. Only then you can start talking about “that viral idea on youtube”.

After an elaborate digital strategy process (aka Immersion) we’re very proud to launch Melbourne’s GPO new website.How did we start? The brief was to create GPO’s online experience. Here’s what we did:

1. Created an annual digital strategy which includes SEM, SEO and most importantly the community element that works alongside our media plan, creative, events and PR.
2. Found and employed the right person to manage the community of Melbourne’s GPO lovers and retailers (Welcome Sarah Willcocks -  Hi Sarah!)
3. Developed the new website with a strong focus on fashion editorial followed by an annual content plan featuring articles, photos, videos, competitions, events and more. Check out our first competition for your chance to win VIP tickets to GPO’s exclusive ‘Fashion at Altitude’ evening parade as part of Melbourne Spring Fashion Week on Wed 2nd Sept-  here.
4. Started a youtube, facebook, twitter and flickr profiles with measurement and management in place. (We didn’t jump at the tools. These were picked from the research and support our goals)
5. Understand that this is only the beginning, not the end product.

I’d like to thank all the people who worked on the project so far and to our clients ISPT and Tracey Winn.

Thankyou to everybody who attended our third FRANkademy session on Friday.  We really appreciated having an inquisitive audience, and the active discussion about an exciting area of communications strategy.

A recap on what we focused on in the session:

We started out by outlining the size of the opportunity social media brings; with its unique reach now higher than email.  We then introduced the bought, owned and earned media integrated approach to communications planning.  Bought – is media you can buy like TV airtime, radio, billboards, magazine space, online banners and so on. Owned includes assets of the business – logo, packaging, website, retail outlets.  Earned is the conversation you engage with your customers, the word of mouth you generate, customer feedback and comments etc.  Traditionally the first two have budgets, strategies and timelines.  But what about earned?  Shouldn’t everything be aligned?  We made the analogy that jumping at social media tools as solutions is like walking into the toolshed, grabbing a drill, a saw and a hammer, and trying to paint the back fence.  It doesn’t work!

We then moved on to two areas of interest in the social media space – Twitter and blogs.  We looked at how businesses are using Twitter to connect to their audience, harness the power of positive word of mouth, enhance customer service, build communities, and align their bought/owned/earned output. In our blog section we explained what value blogs and bloggers can offer brands through some contemporary case studies, and the best way brands can work with bloggers.  We presented guidelines employed by our own blog network Nuffnang , the biggest blog advertising network in Australia.

After the drinks break we went through a case study for Melbourne’s GPO. This showed FRANkVizeum’s focus on building a long term social media strategy, as opposed to a short term ‘campaign’, through the process of immersion.  This involves listening and learning, developing a strategy with budget and timeline, allocating resource to manage the brand community, and implementing the plan to agreed measurement metrics.  We ended by quoting Google analyst Avinash Kaushik – “Social media is like teen sex.  Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it’s finally done there is surprise it is not better”.

Thanks again to our audience from TTF, Taboo, Full Circle, Austereo, MCN, Simply Energy, GoSwitch, Channel Ten, RMIT, and all other guests including Richard!

Now… has everybody done their homework?  Visited our Twitter account?  Looked at Twitter 101 For Business?  Played Brandwars?  If not, you can redeem yourselves by commenting on the blog post below, or contributing your own!  What was most interesting about the session?

Despite losing some of its gloss in recent years due to various drug scandals, no world cycling event captures the imagination of the public like the Tour de France.

Fans urge heroes like Lance Armstrong (who is tweeting between stages) up lung-busting hillclimbs, spill onto almost every inch of the road with banners and flags, watch fierce rivalries play out,  and throughout the stages write messages of support (and self promotion) on the pavement.

In a big step for media innovation, Nike have integrated a number of elements (Armstrong, the Livestrong charity, the event, and their  brand) through social media strategy to bring ‘The Road Is Your Canvas’ campaign to life.  Consumers can get their own 40 character message of hope, inspiration or encouragement sprayed on the Tour route by a ‘Chalkbot‘ via the Nike Website or tweeting Chalkbot on Twitter,  and view the results in the Photo Gallery.

It’s a fantastic idea, and really demonstrates how marketing communications are at their strongest when fully integrated – although it doesn’t hurt having assets like Lance and Nike to play with!

Who wants yesterday’s papers?
Who wants yesterday’s girl?
Who wants yesterday’s papers?
Nobody in the world.

Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones wrote this about his ex-girlfriend Chrissie Shrimpton in the 1960’s – but today it seems consumers on a wider scale don’t even want today’s ‘paper’.  Much has been written about falling readership and the rise of new media, micro-bloggers and so on.  Sharp decreases in ad revenue, job losses and tangible changes in media consumption have also left The Independent Newspaper in the UK asking (in a very funky, interactive way) “What next for newspapers?’.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers thinks we should stop talking about the death of newspapers and start talking about the rise of news brands. To paraphrase their report, they believe trusted news brands will still hold sway, however the delivery mechanism and interaction with content will be radically different.  Of course, this is already happening.

The New York Times is one such ‘traditional’ media outlet grappling with the change.  Their Facebook (460,000 fans and an immense amount of content), Twitter (1.4m followers on the main channel alone with many other individual channels), and blog section (with 70-80 RSS feeds in specific areas of interest) give consumers options to access the media on their own terms – more opportunities for more people to interact more often.  Fantastic.  I am personally subscribed to a number of their online touchpoints, without needing to pick up a copy of the paper from a Manhattan street vendor.

This process of change raises two questions though – who manages this new space, and should all this stuff be free?

The first question of management – NY Times’ appointed Social Media Editor was recently criticised for not being fully immersed in the social media space.  Mashable wondered why Jennifer Preston, despite her job title, hadn’t tweeted in over a month (and then the day after the report was posted, why her frequency of posting went through the roof).  Her response was that she was in the process of ‘listening’ and working out how she can best bring value to the conversation and most effectively guide her journalists.

Mashable make a valid point.  Full credit to the NY Times for identifying the need to change and having a red hot go at it – but how can you be a social media editor and not fully utilise all the tools, participate in the conversation, and learn from inevitable mistakes when starting out?

I imagine an extensive amount of human and technical resource goes into managing the output and content of their social communities, without these consumers helping to pay the bills for their offices, computers, photographers, editors, and quality investigative reporters through newspaper sales and subscriptions (outside of online ad revenues).  And while the paper also ‘profits’ from increased user engagement, time spent with brand, and on a number of other metrics,  the second question arises – should it continue to be free?

NY Times are reconsidering the overall structure of their business model, recently asking subscribers if they would be willing to pay for online content.  The Wall Street Journal is already charging US$1.99/week for access to online premium content.  The possibility exists for New York Times to charge $US5 a month to access news/blog/multimedia content online.  They have already dabbled in this area – ending a 2 year experiment in 2007 that generated US$10m annually from premium subscriptions – which at its peak attracted 200,000 users.

The broader issue is that NY Times is only one publication – and that this trend can be multiplied across the hundreds and thousands of local and national newspapers globally.  Should all content be free?  Or should we move to a subscription model?  Should this be for all content, or premium content only?  How much is a fair price? And would you consider paying for all news sites?  eg. you would pay US$5 a month for the New York Times content, but not a cent for the Banbury Cake newspaper?

The danger of course (which is a frightening thought) is that after all the journalists have disappeared, future news services may be reduced to Today Tonight reports on extending your life by 20 years, celebrity gossip rubbish and popular content on major online portals funded by display advertising.  Is this where we want to be?  Or should we all pitch in and save credible journalism?